01 Aug 2017
Walters Prize winner Shannon Te Ao’s multimedia installation With the sun aglow, I have my pensive moods, 2017 has opened at the Edinburgh Art Festival.
The work is a new commission resulting from a collaboration between the Edinburgh Art Festival and Te Tuhi Contemporary Art Trust.
Shannon thanked Te Tuhi and the festival for their support in developing the work. “We have been able to develop a new work that shines a light on aspects of Aotearoa New Zealand's uniqueness, its geographies and the complex histories that they yield," he said.
The work explores the physical and emotional depths of love, grief, sickness and healing. It revolves around a video installation using footage shot in different locations throughout New Zealand. It also explores a poetic assemblage of tenuously related content including an 1840s waiata, a dance scene from a 1970s Charles Burnett film, a hemp farm, and a 1960s Clyde Otis song famously sung by Dinah Washington.
The international Art Newspaper said the work was "a highlight of the festival commissions"; the United Kingdom-based The Guardian said it was "a mysterious piece that lingers in the mind with its doleful vision and strangely Whitmanesque lyrics" and international visual arts magazine Frieze described it as "achingly beautiful" in their critic's guide to Edinburgh.
The exhibition is part of the New Zealand at Edinburgh 2017 season supported by Creative New Zealand.
More photographs of the opening are on NZ at Edinburgh Facebook page.
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